EULOGY 



ON 



H 



H 







BY 



HENRY WARD BEECHER. 



DELIVERED AT 

Tremont Temple, Boston, 

THURSDAY EVENING, OCT. 22, 1885. 



NEW YORK: 

PUBLISHED BY JENKINS & McCOWAN, 

224, 226, 228 Centre St. 



Copyright, 1885, by .Jenkins Jfe McCowan. 



EULOGY 



ON 



H 



H 




BY 



HENRY WARD BEECHER. 



DELIVERED AT 



Tremont Temple, BostoNt 



THURSDAY EVENING, OCT. 22, 1885. 



NEW YORK: 

PUBLISHED BY JENKLNS & McCOWAN, 

224, 226, 228 Centre St. 



^^^'^ 



:? 



rT^«., 



EULOGY ON GENERAL GRANT. 



Another name is added to the roll of those whom the world 
will not willingly let die. A few years since storm-clouds filled 
his heaven, and obloquy, slander and bitter lies rained down 
upon him. 

The clouds are all blown away, under a serene sky he laid 
down his life, and the Nation wept. The path to his tomb is 
worn by the feet of innumerable pilgrims. The mildewed lips 
of Slander are silent, and even Criticism hesitates lest some 
incautious word should mar the history of the modest, gentle 
magnanimous Warrior. 

The whole Nation watched his passage through humiliating 
misfortunes with unfeigned sympathy ; the whole world sighed 
when his life ended ! At his burial the unsworded hands of 
those whom he had fought lifted his bier and bore him to his 
tomb with love and reverence. 

Grant made no claim to saintship. He was a man of like 
passions, and with as marked limitations as other men. Noth- 
ing could be more distasteful to his honest, modest soul while 
living, and nothing more unbecoming to his memory, than lying 
exaggerations and fulsome flatteries. 

Men without faults are apt to be men without force. A round 
diamond has no brilliancy. Lights and shadows, hills and val- 
leys, give beauty to the landscape. The faults of great and 
generous natures are often over-ripe goodness, or the shadows 
which their virtues cast. 

Three elements enter into the career of a great citizen: 

That which his ancestry gives; 

That which opportunity gives; 

That which his will develops. 

Grant came from a sturdy New England stock; New Eng- 
land derived it from Scotland, Scotland bred it, at a time 
when Covenanters and Puritans were made — men of iron con- 
sciences hammered out upon the anvil of adversity. From N. 



V 

EAhe stream flowed to the Ohio, where it enriched the soil 
till it brought forth abundant harvests of great men. When 
it was Grant's time to be born, he came forth without celestial 
portents and his youth had in it no prophecy of his manhood. " 
His boyhood was wholesome, robust, with a vigorous frame. 
With a heart susceptible of tender love, he yet was not social. 
He was patient and persistent. He loved horses, and could 
master them. That is a good sign. 

Grant had no art of creating circumstances; opportunity 
must seek him, or else he would plod through life without dis- 
closing the gifts which God hid in him. The gold in the hills 
•cannot disclose itself It must be sought and dug. 

A sharp and wiry politician, for some reason of Providence, 
performed a generous deed, in sending young Grant to West 
Point. He finished his course there, distinguished as a skillfull 
and bold rider, with an inclination to mathematics, but with 
little taste for the theory and literature of war, but with sym- 
pathy for its external and material developments. In boyhood 
and youth he was marked by simplicity, candor, veracity and 
silence. 

After leaving the Academy he saw service in Mexico, and 
afterward in California, but without conspicuous results. 

Then came a clouded period, a sad life of irresolute vibration 
between self-indulgence and aspiration through intemperance 
He resigned from the army, and at that time one would have 
feared that his life would end in eclipse. Hercules crushed two 
serpents sent to destroy him in his cradle. It was later in his 
life that Grant destroyed the enemy that "biteth like a ser- 
pent and stingeth like an adder." 

At length he struck at the root of the matter. Others agree 
not to drink, which is good. Grant overcame \.\\QZvish to drink 
— which is better. But the cloud hung over his reputation for 
many years, and threatened his ascendency when better days 
came. Of all his victories, many and great, this was the great- 
est that he conquered himself. His will was stronger than his 
passions. 

Poor, much shattered, he essayed farming. Carrying wood 
for sale to St. Louis did not seem to be that for which he was 
created; neither did planting crops, or raising cattle. 



Tanning is an honorable calling, and, to many, a road to 
wealth. Grant found no gold in the tan vat. 

Then he became a listless merchant — a silent, unsocial and 
rather moody waiter upon petty trafific. 

He was a good subaltern, a poor farmer, a worse tanner, a 
worthless trafficer. Without civil experience, without literary 
gifts, too diffident to be ambitious, too modest to put himself 
forward, too honest to be a politician, he was of all men the 
least likely to attain eminence, and absolutely unfitted, appar- 
ently, for pre-eminence; }'et God's Providence selected him. 

When the prophet Samuel went forth to annoint a successor 
to the impetuous and imperious King Saul, he caused all the 
children of Jesse to pass before him. He rejected one by one 
the whole band. At length the youngest called from among 
the flock came in, and the Lord said to Samuel, "Arise, this 
is /z^," and Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in 
the midst of his brethren, and the spirit of the Lord came upon 
him from that day forward, (i Sam. i6.) 

Ordained was Grant with the ointment of war — black and 
sulphurous. 

Had Grant died at the tan-yard, or from behind the counter, 
the world would never have suspected that it had lost a hero. 
He would have fallen as an undistinguishable leaf among the 
millions cast down every year. His time had not come. It was 
plain that he had no capacity to create his opportunity. It 
must find him out, or he would die ignoble and unknown ! 

It was coming ! Already the clouds afar off were gathering. 
He saw them not. No figures were seen upon the dim horizon 
of the already near future. 

The insulted flag; the garments rolled in blood; a million 
men in arms; the sulphurous smoke of battle; gorey heaps 
upon desperate battle fields; an army of slowly moving crip- 
pled heroes; graveyards populous as cities; they were all 
in the clouded horizon, though he saw them not ! 

Let us look upon the scene on which he was soon to exert 
a mighty energy. 

This continent lay waiting for ages for the seed of civil- 
ization. At len":th a sower came forth to sow. While he 



sowed the good seed of liberty and Christian civilization, an 
enemy, darkling, sowed tares. They sprang up and grew 
together. The Constitution cradled both Slavery and Liberty. 
While yet ungrown they dwelt together in peace. They snarled 
in youth, quarreled when half grown, and fought when of full 
age. The final catastrophe was inevitable. No finesse, no device 
or compromise could withstand the inevitable. The conflict 
began in Congress; it drifted into commerce; it rose into the 
very air, and public sentiment grew hot, and raged in the pul- 
pit, the forum, and in politics. 

The South, like a queenly beauty, grew imperious and 
exacting; the North, like an obsequious suitor, knelt at her 
feet, only to receive contempt and mockery. 

Both parties. Whig and Democrat, drank of the cup of 
her sorcery. It killed the Whig party. The Democrat was 
tougher, and was only besotted. A few, like John the Bap- 
tist, were preaching repentance, but, like him, they were in 
the wilderness, and seemed rude and shaggy fanatics. 

If a wise moderation had possessed the South, if they had 
conciliated the North, if they had met the just scruples of 
honest men, who, hating slavery, dreaded the dishonor of 
breaking the compacts of the Constitution, the South might 
have held control for another hundred years. It was not to 
be. God sent a strong delusion upon them. 

Nothing can be plainer than that all parties in the State 
were drifting in the dark, without any comprehension of the 
elemental causes at work. Without prescience or sagacity, 
like ignorant physicians, they prescribed at random; they 
sewed on patches, new compromise upon old garments, sought 
to conceal the real depth and danger of the gathering torrent 
by crying peace, peace, to each other. In short, they were 
seeking to medicate volcanoes and stop earthquakes by admin- 
istering political quinine. The wise statesmen were bewildred 
and politicians were juggling fools. 

The South had laid the foundation of her industry, her com- 
merce, and her commonwealth upon slavery. It was slavery 
that inspired her councils, that engorged her philanthropy, 
that corrupted her political economy and theology, that dis- 



turbed all the ways of active politics; broke up sympathy be- 
tween North and South. As Ahab met Elijah with, "Art thou 
he that troubleth Israel ?" so Slavery charged the sentiments 
of Freedom with vexatious meddling and unwarrantable inter- 
ference. 

The South had builded herself upon the rock of Slavery. It 
lay in the very channels of Civilization, like some Flood Rock 
lying sullen off Hell Gate. The tides of controversy rushed 
upon it and split into eddies and swirling pools, bringing inces- 
sant disaster. The rock would not move. It must be removed. 
It was the South itself that furnished the engineers. Arrogance 
in Council sunk the shaft. Violence chambered the subterranean 
passages, and Infatuation loaded them with infernal dynamite. 
All was secure. Their rock was their fortress. The hand that 
fired upon Sumter exploded the mine, and tore the fortress to 
atoms. For one moment it rose into the air like spectral hills 
— for one moment the waters rocked with wild confusion, then 
settled back to quiet, and the way of civilization was opened! 

The spark that was kindled at Fort Sumter fell upon the 
North, like fire upon autumnal prairies. Men came together in 
the presence of this universal calamity with sudden fusion. 
They forgot all separations of politics, parties, or even of re- 
ligion itself. It was a conflagration of patriotism. The bugle 
and the drum rang out in every neighborhood, the plow stood 
still in the furrow, the hammer dropped from the anvil, book 
and pen were forgotten, pulpit and forum, court and shop, felt 
the electric shock. Parties dissolved and reformed. The 
Democratic party sent forth a host of noble men, and swelled 
the Republican ranks, and gave many noble leaders and irre- 
sistible energy to the Hosts of War. The whole land became 
a military school, and officers and men began to learn the art 
and practice of ivar. 

When once the North had organized its armies, there was 
soon disclosed an amiable folly of conciliation. It hoped for 
some peaceable way out of the war; generals seemed to fight 
so that no one should be hurt; they saw the mirage of future 
parties above the battlefield, and anxiously considered the 
political effect of their military conduct. They were fighting 



8 

not to break down rebellion, but to secure a future presidency 
— or governorship. The South had smelted into a glowing 
mass. It believed in its course with an infatuation that would 
have been glorious if the cause had been better ! It put its 
whole soul into it and struck hard ! 

The South fought for slavery and independence. The North 
fought for Union, but for political success after the War. Thus 
for two years, not unmarked by great deeds, the war lingered. 
Lincoln, sad and sorrowful, felt the moderation of his gen- 
erals, and longed for a man of iron mould, who had but two 
words in his military vocabulary, VICTORY or ANNIHILATION. 

He was coming ! He was heard from at Henry and Donel- 
son. 

Three great names were rising to sight — Sherman, Thomas, 
Sheridan; and larger than either. Grant ! With his advent 
the armies, with some repulses, went steadily forward, from 
conquering to conquer. Aside from all military qualities, 
he had one absorbing spirit — the Union must be saved, the re- 
bellion must be beaten, the Confederate armies must be 
threshed to chaff as on a summer threshing floor. He had 
no political ambition, no imaginary reputation to preserve 
or gain. A great genius for grand strategy, a comprehension 
of complex and vast armies, caution, prudence and silence 
while preparing, an endless patience, an indomitable will, 
and a real, downright fighting quality. 

Thus at length Grant was really born ! He had lain in the 
nest for long as an infertile egg. The brooding of war hatched 
the egg, and an eagle came forth ! 



It is impossible to reach the full measure of Grant's military 
genius until we survey the greatness of this most extraordinary 
war of modern days, or it may be said of any age. 

For more than four years there were more than a million 
men on each side, stretched out upon a line of between one 
and two thousand miles, and a blockade rigorously enforced 
along a coast of an equal extent. During that time, counting 
no battle in which there were not five hundred Union men 
engaged, there was fought more than two thousand engage- 
ments — two thousand two hundred and sixty-one of record. 



9 

Amid this sea of blood, there shot up great battles, that for 
numbers, fighting and losses, will rank with the great battles 
of the world. 

In 1862 the losses by death, wounds and missing on each 
side, as extracted from Government Records, were: 

Union. Confed. Total. 

1. Shiloh 13.500 10,699 24,199 

2. Seven Pines and Fair Oaks 5.739 7.997 13.736 

3. 7 Day Retreat and Malvern Hill.. . 15,249 17,583 32,832 

4. 2d Bull Run 7,8cxD 3,700 1 1 , 100 

5. Antietam 12,469 25,899 38,367 

6. Fredericksburg 12,353 4,576 16,929 

7. Stone River ".578 25,560 37,138 

1863. 

8. Chancellorsville 16,030 12,281 28,31 1 

9. Gettysburg 23,186 31,621 54,807 

10. Chicamauga 15,851 17.804 33,655 

11. Chattanooga 5.616 8,684 

1864. 

12. Wilderness 37.737 11.400 49.137 

13. Spotsylvania 26,421 9,000 35,421 

14. Cold Harbor 14-93 1 i .700 16,700 

15. Petersburg 10,586 28,000 38,586 

16. Chattanooga to Atlanta 37.^99 

Over 26,000 Northern soldiers died in prison, in captivity. If 
we reckon all who perished by violence and by sickness on 
both sides, nearly a million died in the War of Emancipation. 

The number must be largely swelled if we add all who died 
at home, of sickness and wounds received in the campaign. 

The Secretary of War, in his report, dated November 22, 
1865, makes the following remarks, which show more than any- 
thing else the spirit animating the people of the loyal States : 
" On several occasions, when troops were promptly needed to 
avert impending disaster, vigorous exertion brought them into 
the field from remote States with incredible speed. Official re- 
ports show that after the disasters on the Peninsula, in 1862, 
over 80,000 troops were enlisted, organized, armed, equipped, 
and sent into the field in less than a month. 60,000 troops 
have repeatedly gone to the field within four weeks. 90,000 
infantry were sent to the armies from the five States of Ohio 



10 

Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin, within twenty days. 
When Lee's army surrendered, thousands of recruits were pour- 
ing in, and men were discharged from recruiting stations and 
rendezvous in every State." 

Into this sulphurous storm of war Grant entered almost un- 
known. It was with difficulty that he could obtain a command. 
Once set forward, Donelson, Shiloh, Vicksbiirg, Chicaniauga, 
The Wilderness y Spotsylvania, Petersburg, Appomattox, these 
were his footsteps. In four years he had risen, without politi- 
cal favor, from the bottom to the very highest command — not 
second to any living commander in all the world ! 

His plans were large, his undiscouraged will was patient to 
obduracy. He was not fighting for reputation, nor for the dis- 
play of generalship, nor for a future Presidency. He had but 
one motive, and that as intense as life itself — the subjugation 
of the rebellion and the restoration of the broken Union. He 
embodied the feelings of the common people. He was their 
perfect representative. The war was waged for the mainten- 
ance of the Union, the suppression of armed resistance, and, 
at length, for the eradication of Slavery. Every step, from 
Donelson to Appomattox, evinced with increasing intensity 
this his one terrible purpose. He never wavered, turned aside, 
or dallied. He waded through blood to the horses' bridles. 

In all this career he never lost courage or equanimity. With 
a million men, for whose movements he was responsible, he 
yet carried a tranquil mind, neither depressed by disasters, nor 
elated by success. Gentle of heart, familiar with all, never 
boasting, always modest — 6"r^«/came of the old self-contained 
stock, men of a simple force of being, which allied his 
genius to the great elemental forces of Nature, silent, invisi- 
ble, irresistible. When his work was done, and the defeat of 
Confederate armies was final, this dreadful man of blood was 
tender toward his late adversaries as a woman toward her son. 
He imposed no humiliating conditions, spared the feelings of 
his antagonists, sent home the disbanded Southern men with 
food and with horses for working their crops, and when a re- 
vengeful spirit in the Executive Chair showed itself, and 
threatened the chief Southern Generals, Grant, with a holy in- 



11 

dignation, interposed himself, and compelled his superior to 
relinquish his rash purpose. 

There have been men — there are yet — for stupidity is long- 
lived — who regard Grant as only a man of luck. Surely he was ! 
Is it not luck through such an ancestry to have had con- 
ferred upon him such a body, such a disposition, such great- 
ness of soul, such patriotism unalloyed by ambition, such 
military genius, such an indomitable will, and such a capacity 
for handling the largest armies of any age ? 

For four years and more this man of continuous Luck, across 
a rugged continent, in the face of armies of men as brave as 
his own, commanded by Generals of extraordinary ability, 
performed every function of strategy in grand War, which 
Jomini attributes to Napoleon and his greatest marshals, 
and Napier to Wellington. Whether Grant could have con- 
ducted a successful retreat will never be known. He was 
never defeated. 

Grant has been severely criticised for the waste of life. War 
is not created for the purpose of saving life, but by a noble 
spending of blood to save the Commonwealth. The great end 
which he achieved would have been cheaply gained, at double 
the expense. 

After the Battle of the Wilderness he was styled the Butcher, 

But we are not to forget the circumstances under which the 
conduct of the last great campaign was committed to him. 
For four years the heroic and patient Army of the Potomac 
had squandered blood and treasure without measure, and had 
gained not a step. With Generals many, excellently skilled 
in logistics, skillful in everything but success, they fought and 
retreated ; they dug, they waded, they advanced and re- 
treated. They went down to Richmond and looked upon it, 
and came back to defend Washington. 

Their victories were fruitless. Antietam was ably fought, 
but weakly followed up. Gettysburg, with hideous slaughter, 
sent Lee back unpursued, undestroyed, though he waited 
three or four days, helpless, cooped-up and surely doomed 
had Sheridan or Grant been in Meade's place. 

The Army of the Potomac needed a General who knew how 



12 

to employ their splendid bravery, their all-enduring pluck. 
They had danced long enough; they had led off — changed 
partners — chassed — they had gone into campaigns with slow 
and solemn music, but returned with quick-steps. They 
seemed desirous of making war so as not to exasperate the 
South. 

Do not men know that nothing spends life faster than un- 
fighting war ? Disease is more deadly than the bullet. In all 
the war, but one out of every 42 that died were slain by the bul- 
let, and one out of every 13 by disease. 6,000,000 men passed 
through the Hospitals during the war; over three million with 
malarial diseases. 

It seemed doubtful whether the Government was putting 
down rebellion, or whether Lee was putting down the 
Government. An eminent critic says : " The fire and 
passion, downright earnestness and self-abandon that the 
South threw into the struggle at the outset and maintained 
for two full years, had, it must be admitted, so far impaired 
the morale of the Union forces, that while courage was no- 
where wanting, self-confidence had been seriously diminished. 
This was especially true of the devoted and decimated Army 
of the Potomac, whose commanders, after the first battle of 
Bull Run, always appeared to be afraid of exasperating the 
enemy. Driving Lee to extremities was the one thing that 
they were all loth to do. They would fight to the last drop 
of blood to defend Washington, to hold their own, to preserve 
the Union, but to corner the enemy, to drive him to desper- 
ation, to make him shed the last drop of his own blood, was 
the one thing they would not do, and no amount of urging 
could make them do it. It was this arricre pense'c \.\^-a.\. held 
the hand of McClellan and of Meade after Antietam and Get- 
tysburg. Both of these engagements were victories for the 
Army of the Potomac, and both were robbed of their fruits by 
a lurking fear of the lion at bay. " They are 'shooing' the 
enemy out of Maryland," said Lincoln, with his peculiar apt- 
ness and homeliness." 

When Grant came to the Army of the Potomac, he reversed 
the methods of all who preceded him. Braver soldiers never 



13 

were, and Valiant Commanders; but the Generals had not 
learned the art of fighting with deadly intent. Peace is very 
good for peace, but war is organized Rage. It means destruc- 
tion or it means nothing. 

At the Battle of the Wilderness, Grant stripped his commis- 
sary train of its guards to fill a gap in the line of battle. When 
expostulated with for exposing his Army to thelloss of all its 
provisions, his reply was: 

" When this army is tvhipped, it will not want any provisions!' 

All Summer, all the Autumn, all the Winter, all the Spring, 

and early Summer again, he hammered Lee, with blow on blow, 

until, at Appomattox, the great, but not greatest. Southern 

General went to the ground. 

Grant was a great fighter, but not a fighter only. 
His mind took in the whole field of war — as wide and com- 
plex as any that ever Napoleon knew. He combined in his 
plans the operations of three Armies, and for the first time in 
the War, the whole of Union forces were acting in concert. 

He had the patience of Fate, and the force of Thor. If he 
neglected the rules of war, as at Vicksburg, it was to make 
better rules, to those who were strong enough to employ them. 
Counselors gave him materials. He formed his own plans. 
Abhorring Show, simple in manner, gentle in his intercourse, 
modest and even diffident in regard to his own personality, he 
seems to have been the only man in Camp who was ignorant 
of his own greatness. Never was a Commander better served, 
never were subordinates more magnanimously treated. The 
fame of his Generals was as dear to him as his own. Those who 
might have been expected to be his rivals, were his bosom 
friends. While there were envies and jealousies among minor 
officers, the great names, Thomas, Sherman, Sheridan, give to 
history a new instance of a great friendship between great 
Warriors. 

Some future day a Napier will picture the final drama: the 
breaking up of Lee's right wing at Five Forks; Lee's retreat; 
Grant's grim, relentless pursuit; Sheridan, like a raging lion, 
heading off the fleeing armies, that were wearied, worn, deci- 
mated, conquered; and, at the end, the modesty of their 



14 

Victorious General; the delicacy with which he treated his 
beaten foe; the humanity of the terms given to the men: sent 
away with food, and horses for their farms; all this will form a 
picture of IVar and of Peace. 

He never forgot that the South was part of his country. 
The moment that the South lay panting and helpless upon the 
ground, Grant carried himself with magnanimous and sympa- 
thetic consideration. After the fall of Richmond he turned 
aside and returned to Washington without entering the con- 
quered Capital. 

When Johnston surrendered upon terms not agreeable to 
Lincoln, Stanton, like a roaring lion fearing to lose its prey, 
sent Grant to overrule him. He loved Sherman, and was un- 
willing to enter his camp lest he should seem to snatch from 
him the glory of his illustrious campaign. From a near town 
he enabled Sherman to reconstruct his terms, and accept 
Gen'l Johnston's surrender. 

When Lincoln was dead, Vice-President Johnson became 
President; a man well fitted for carrying on a fight, but not 
skilled in Peace, with a morbid sense of Justice, he determined 
that the leaders of rebellion should be made to suffer as ex- 
amples; as if the death of all the first-born, the desolation of 
every Southern home, the impoverished condition and bank- 
ruptcy of every citizen were not example enough ! He ordered 
Lee to be arrested. Grant refused. When Johnson would 
have employed the Army to effect his purposes. Grant, with 
quick but noble rebellion, refused obedience to his superior, 
and, arranging to take from his hands all military control, 
repressed the President's wild temper and savage purpose of 
a dishonoring Justice. 

Having brought the long and disastrous war to a close, in 
his own heart Grant would have chosen to have rested upon 
his laurels, and lived a retired military life. It was not to be 
permitted. He was called to the Presidency by universal 
acclaim, and it fell to him to conduct a campaign of Recon- 
struction even more burdensome than the war. 

It would seem impossible to combine in one, eminent civil 
and military genius. To a certain extent they have elements 



15 

in common. But the predominant element in war is organized 
Force; of civil government, Influence. Statesmanship is less 
brilliant than Generalship, but requires a different and a higher 
moral and intellectual genius. God is frugal in creating great 
men — men great enough to hold in eminence, the elements 
of a great General and of a great Ruler. Washington was 
eminent in Statesmanship — but then he was not a great Gen- 
eral. At any rate, he had no opportunity to develop the fact. 
Alexander was a mere brutal fighter. 

Cesar as Emperor differed from Cesar as General only as a 
sword sheathed differs from a sword unsheathed. 
Frederick the Great was simply a Military Ruler. 
Napoleon came near to combine the two elements in the 
earlier period of his career, but the genius of Force gradually 
weakened that sense of right and justice on which Statesman- 
ship must rest. 

Grant had in him the element of great Statesmanship; but 
neither his education, nor his training, nor the desperate neces- 
sities of war, gave it a fair chance of development in a condi- 
tion of things which bewildered the wisest statesmen. 

The tangled skein of affairs would have tasked a Cavour or a 
Bismarck. The Period of Reconstruttion is yet too near our 
war-inflamed eyes to be philosophically judged. 

I. Came the disbanding of the army. That was so easily 
done that the world has never done justice to the marvel. The 
soldiers of three great armies^dropped their arms at the word 
of command, dissolved their organizations, and disappeared. 
To-day the mightiest force on earth, to-morrow they were 
not ! As a summer storm darkens the whole heavens, shakes 
the ground with its thunder, and empties its quiver of light- 
ning, and is gone in an hour, as if it had never been, so was it 
with both armies. Neither in the South nor in the North 
was there a cabal of officers, nor any affray of soldiers — for 
every soldier was yet more a citizen. 

In this resumption of citizen life. Grant, accompanied by his 
most brilliant Generals, led the way. He hated war, its very 
insignia, and in foreign lands refused to witness military pa- 
geants. He had had enough of war. He loved peace. 



16 

When advanced to the Presidency, three vital questions were 
to be solved. 

1. The status of the four miUion Emancipated Slaves. 

2. The adjustment of the political relations of the dislocated 
States. 

3. The restraint and control of that gulf-stream of Finance 
which threatened to wash out the foundations of honest industry, 
and which brought to the Nation more moral mischief than had 
the whole war itself. We are in peril from golden quicksands 
yet. 

Grant was eminently wise upon this question. His veto 
saved the country from a vitiated and corrupting circulation. 

The exaltation of the domestic African to immediate Citizen- 
ship was the most audacious act of faith and fidelity that ever 
was witnessed. 

Their fidelity to the duties of bondage was most Christian. 
In all the war, knowing that their emancipation was to be 
gained or lost, there was never an insurrection, nor a recorded 
instance of cruelty or insubordination. This came not from 
cowardice; for, when, in the later periods of the war, they were 
enlisted and drilled, they made soldiers so brave as to extort 
admiration and praise from prejudice itself. They deserved 
their liberty for their good conduct. 

But, were they prepared for Citizenship ? The safety of our 
civil economy rests upon the intelligence of the citizen. But 
the slaves in mass were greatly ignorant. 

It was a political necessity to arm them with the ballot as a 
means of self-defense. 

In many of the Southern States a probationary state would 
have been wiser, but in others it would have remanded them to 
substantial bondage. 

In this grand department of Statesmanship General Grant 
accepted the views of the most eminent Republicans, Stanton, 
Chase, Sumner, Thad. Stevens, Fessenden, Sherman, Garfield, 
Conkling, Evarts, and of all the great leaders. 

In the readjustment of the political relations of the South 
he was wise, generous, and magnanimous in his career. Not a 
line in letter, speech or message can be found that would 
wound the self-respect of Southern citizens. 



17 

When the dangerous heresy of a Greenback currency had 
gained political power, and Congress was disposed to open 
the flood-gates of a rotten currency, his veto, an act of cour- 
age, turned back the deluge and saved the land from a whole 
generation of mischief. Had he done but this one thing, he 
would have deserved well of History. 

The respects in which he fell below the line of sound 
Statesmanship — and these are not a few — are to be attributed to 
the influence of advisers whom he had taken into his confi- 
dence. Such was his loyalty to friendship that it must be set 
down as a fault — a fault rarely found among public men. 

Many springs of mischief were opened which still flow. 
When it was proposed to nominate Grant for a third term, the 
real objections to the movement among wise and dispassionate 
men was not so much against Grant as against the staff which 
would come in with him. 

On the whole, if one considers the intrinsic difficulty of the 
question belonging to his administration, the stormy days of 
politics and parties during his eight years, it must be admitted 
that the country owes to his unselfish disposition, to his gen 
eral wisdom, to his unsullied integrity, if not the meed of wisest 
yet the reputation of one who, pre-eminent in war, was emin- 
ent in administration, more perhaps by the wisdom of a noble 
nature than by that intelligence which is bred only by experi- 
ence. Imperious counselors and corrupt parasites dimmed 
the light of his political administration. 

We turn from Grant's public life to his unrestful private life. 
After a return from a tour of the world, during which he met 
on all hands a distinguished reception, he ventured upon the 
dangerous road of speculation. The desire of large wealth 
was deep-seated in Grant's soul. His early experience of 
poverty had probably taken away from it all romance. Had 
wealth been sought by a legitimate production of real prop- 
erty, he would have added one more laurel to his career. But, 
with childlike simplicity of ignorance, he committed all he had 
to the wild chances of legalized gambling. But a few days 
before the humiliating crash "came, he believed himself to be 
worth three millions of dollars ! What service had been ren- 



18 

dered for it ? What equivalent of industry, skill, productive- 
ness, distribution or convenience ? None. Did he never think 
that this golden robe, with which he designed to clothe his 
declining years, was woven of air, was in its nature unsubstan- 
tial, and not reputable ? His success was a gorgeous bubble, 
reflecting on its brilliant surface all the hues of heaven, but 
which grew thinner as it swelled larger. A touch dispelled 
the illusion, and left him poor. 

It is a significant proof of the impression produced upon the 
public mind of the essential honesty of his mind, and of the 
simplicity of his ignorance of practical business, that the whole 
nation condoned his folly, and believed in his intentional hon- 
esty. But the iron had entered his soul. That which all the 
hardships of war, and the wearing anxieties of public adminis- 
tration could not do, the shame and bitterness of this great 
Bankruptcy achieved. 

The resisting forces of his body gave way. A disease in am- 
bush sprang forth and carried him captive. Patiently he sat 
in the region and shadow of death. A mild heroism of gentle- 
ness and patience hovered about him. The iron will that had 
upheld him in all the vicissitudes of war, still in a gracious 
guise sustained his lingering hours. 

His household love, never tarnished, never abated, now 
roused him to one last heroic achievement — to provide for the 
future of his family. No longer were there golden hopes for 
himself. The vision of wealth had vanished. But love took 
its place, and under weakness, pain and anguish, he wrought 
out a history of his remarkable career. A kindly hand admin- 
istered the trust. It has amply secured his loved household 
from want. 

When the last lines were written, he laid back upon his couch 
and breathed back his great Soul to God, whom he had wor- 
shiped unostentatiously after the manner of his fathers. 

A man he was without vices, with an absolute hatred of lies, 
and an ineradicable love of truth, of a perfect loyalty to friend- 
ship, neither envious of others nor selfish for himself. With a 
zeal for the public good, unfeigned, he has left to memory only 
such weaknesses as connect him with humanity, and such 
virtues as will rank him among heroes. 



19 

The tidings of his death, long expected, gave a shock to the 
whole world. Governments, Rulers, Eminent Statesmen and 
Scholars from all civilized nations gave sincere tokens of sym- 
pathy. For the hour, sympathy rolled as a wave over all our 
own land. It closed the last furrow of war, it extinguished 
the last prejudice, it effaced the last vestige of hatred, and 
cursed be the hand that shall bring them back ! 

Johnston and Buckner on one side, Sherman and Sheridan 
upon the other of his bier, he has come to his tomb a silent 
symbol that Liberty had conquered Slavery. Patriotism Rebel- 
lion, and Peace War. 

He rests in peace. No drum or cannon shall disturb his rest. 

Sleep, Hero, until another trumpet shall shake the heavens 
and the earth. Then come forth to glory in immortality, 



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